Web Design and Development

AJ Aluthwala - KallistoArt Remember back in the day when all you needed was a yellow pages ad and a landline phone? Maybe you don't, which is fine.  Because now we have the internet and the internet is filled with websites.  Which means that your business needs a website in order to be found. But how do you create a website? Listen as AJ form KallistoArt details how he cofounded and helped build a web design, SEO and mobile app company.  Having started in 2006, he has seen the evolution of the internet and kept his company at the cutting edge. Enjoy! Visit AJ at https://kallistoart.com/ [00:00:01] You have found Authentic Business Adventures, a business [00:00:04] program that brings you the struggles, stories, and triumphant successes of business owners across land. [00:00:09] Downloadable audio episodes [00:00:11] of the Authentic Business Adventures podcast can be found on the podcast link. [00:00:14] Found at drawincustomers.com. We are [00:00:17] locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie. [00:00:19] My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur, [00:00:21] author, speaker and helpful coach to small business owners across the country. [00:00:24] And today we are welcoming/preparing to learn from AJ Aluthwala, co founder of Kallisto Art. [00:00:31] AJ, how are you doing today? [00:00:33] Doing fantastic James, thanks for having me. [00:00:36] I am excited because you have a good thing [00:00:39] going in the marketing world, I guess, and even beyond the app world. [00:00:42] So how about we start with you telling the crew what is Kallisto Art? [00:00:47] Yeah, Kallisto Art is an outfit which can create you a website, [00:00:54] create you a mobile app, create you a web app, [00:00:58] and also work on your search engine optimization to make your phone ring. [00:01:02] Nice. I love when people's phone rings. [00:01:05] Yeah. [00:01:08] Businesses needs it. That's all good. [00:01:10] So tell me, let's start with the website creation. [00:01:13] How long have you been around building websites, James? [00:01:17] We've been doing this for the last 16 years. [00:01:19] So we started the company in 2006. [00:01:22] It was almost just a hobby at the time. [00:01:27] I was at Wichita State pursuing my MBA and then I buddied up with [00:01:36] Ravi and we thought that we should start a company because we got asked [00:01:44] by lot of friends and family whether they wanted a website created. [00:01:50] They asked us whether we can create [00:01:52] something for them and it was like, yeah, sure, we just created almost for free [00:01:57] at the time because it was really kind of a pit project for us. [00:02:01] But as time went by, we realized that there's a real need [00:02:06] for it and that's how Kallisto Art came into play. [00:02:10] Nice. [00:02:11] So back in the 16 years ago, let me think, there was no WordPress. [00:02:17] We're talking dreamweaver or just HTML. [00:02:20] It was HTML coding. [00:02:24] There was Dream Weaver too with some [00:02:26] of the Flash stuff, but there was front page [00:02:35] so HTML coding, hard coding and so the maintainability [00:02:40] of those sites were just disastrous because they would consume a lot of time. [00:02:46] But if you think about it, [00:02:48] back in the day, if you kind of go back in time in the 90s having a website was [00:02:54] just like for bragging rights, oh, I got a website. [00:02:59] It was really not a leads gen thing. [00:03:02] It wasn't doing any of that. [00:03:04] It was more like I have a website or I paid a guy to get myself a website. [00:03:09] Right. [00:03:09] And then in the early 2000s this changed a little bit with everything going [00:03:15] on with the.com then people recognize the need to have [00:03:22] a solid website and there was a purpose to it as well. [00:03:26] Right? So there was a certain level of legion [00:03:29] which was happening out of that and people were still kind of dancing around it just [00:03:35] like how people are dancing around cryptocurrency, right? [00:03:40] Because you don't really know what's [00:03:43] you think that you need it, but you're not sure. [00:03:47] And then once you get one, you won't touch it. [00:03:52] For the next ten years, it's going to just sit there. [00:03:56] It's going to act as your online billboard and you don't have to really mess with it. [00:04:00] And it just stays there. [00:04:03] And we came in right in the middle in 2006. [00:04:07] So I think late 2000, that's when people truly start [00:04:15] recognizing, okay, there's actually power to having a website. [00:04:19] I mean, at the time, I remember [00:04:21] right around 2007, eight time period, we were creating ecommerce sites too. [00:04:29] Ecommerce around. [00:04:32] I remember we created a website called [00:04:34] Outman Supply, which was an ecommerce site to sell Coleman camping products. [00:04:43] Oh, nice. [00:04:44]...